Patch Note:1.5.46.0
This is a milestone update, meaning it has about a month of changes in it. This particular milestone focused on bugs and polish so there's not as much new content as usual. However, there is quite a bit and hopefully some of your favorite bugs have been fixed as well. Main changes include: * Port Contention: Changed the unrest values at which ports change state. See below for details. * Port Status UI (used to be Conquest Status UI): This piece of UI was annoying as heck if you were trying to check the status of contention for a particular port or find out when the next port battle is. The UI Strike Team has revamped this UI and made it 100x better than it was. * Fortaleza da Luz: This is new content for full groups of level 50 players. Prepare to be spooked. * Ship Outfitting balancing: Some outfitting was stupidly overpowered. Some was stupidly underpowered. The Design team has tuned these items significantly. * Insurance: PvP in our game has had a higher level of risk than many players were comfortable with or happy about. We've added insurance on ships and outfitting in order to mitigate that risk a bit. * When Gibara or West End are Raided by Pirates, they look different - it's much more obvious what state they're in. Have fun with that. Known Issues: * Ad Hoc Invisibility prevents players from initiating or joining PvE battles. No more puddle jumping to get through red zones. * Mission Rollbacks: We may or may not have fixed this. We have added some tools to help us figure it out if it happens again. If it happens to you, please log a support request ASAP and include your game log. You can simply cancel the missions you've done before and retake the ones you want. In certain circumstances, you may find you can't complete the new missions. If so, mention that in your support request and a GM will happily work with your to resolve this. * Character Rollbacks: We believe we've fixed these. However, if this happens to you, log a support request ASAP with as much info as you can provide - where you were when you logged out, when you logged out, when you logged in, attach game logs from the session you logged out and the session you logged, and tell us what you lost (as much as you can recall). In most cases, a GM will quickly help you get reestablished. Differences between 1.4.34.0 and 1.5.46.0 include but aren't limited to: Ships / Outfitting: * Abaddon's Will: Added 10% structure/armor/reload bonus. Secondary Battery 6lb -> 8lb, Main Battery 12lb -> 16lb * Achilles: Armor/Structure Bonus 25% -> 45%, Sail Bonus 17.5% -> 25%, Reload Bonus 10% -> 15%, Moved one pair of guns from the secondary battery to the main battery * Bahamut: Added 10% structure/armor bonus, 20% reload bonus * Cursed Blade: Speed 16.3 -> 16.4, Structure/Armor Bonus 20% -> 60%. Added a pair of 8lb guns. * Expedition: +7.5% reload rate, level 16 -> 19, Guns 18x6lb -> 20x7lb, Sail Bonus 10% -> 15% * Falcon: Speed 14.5 -> 16 * Fallen: +12.5% reload rate, Level 16 -> 19, OS Speed 60 -> 64, Battle Speed 16.75 -> 17.5, Guns 20x6lb -> 22x6lb * Gallant: Speed 15.4 -> 15.9 * Hercules Sleek: Speed 16.15 -> 16 * Intrepid: Armor/Structure Bonus 30% -> 35%, Reload Bonus 12% -> 20%, Tracking 15 -> 16 * Lancer: +10% reload rate * Mercy: Sail Bonus 20% -> 25%, Broadside DR 7 -> 9, Main Gun Battery 16lb -> 18lb, Acceleration 0.98 -> 1.08 * Mont Blanc: Structure/Armor Bonus 35% -> 40%, Reload Bonus 15% -> 25%, Secondary Gun Battery 9lb -> 10lb, Main Gun Battery 15lb -> 18lb * Myrmidon MC: Armor/Structure Bonus 25% -> 30%, Mast Bonus 15% -> 20%, Reload Bonus 10% -> 16%, Main Gun Battery 30x12lb -> 34x12lb. * Reaper's Grasp: Speed 15.75 -> 16.5, Main Gun Battery 14x8lb -> 16x9lb * Reason: Structure Bonus 10% -> 20%, Armor Bonus 10% -> 25%, Reload Bonus 10% -> 17.5%, Tracking 11 -> 13 * Red Devil: Speed 16.05 -> 16.15, Armor/Structure Bonus 25% -> 32.5%, Reload Bonus 15% -> 20% * Tigre MC: Tracking 12 -> 14 * Made a pass through our outfitting and set the display categories on items so that results and activatable cargo types show up as either "Usable Items" or "Consumable Items." Also did away with our multiple consumable item categories, which never made any sense. * Most general ship outfitting and uncommon/unique permanent has been adjusted and brought into a consistent set of standards in relationship to common permanent ship outfitting. See the devlog here??? * Multiple general outfitting items of the same type can now be stacked in inventory. Stack size limit = 5. * All Refits: 2 durability -> 3 * Bonus Loot Book / Bonus XP Book: Added a 5-second cooldown in order to prevent two being used at the same time. (They don't stack so using two at once wastes one.) * Some outfitting items (Company Hull Bracing and others) were listed as General outfitting but only fit certain size ships (small, in that example). Now they display their size requirement. * Extra Hammock Space, Colossal now has a weight of 10 instead of 1. * Insignia of Swiftness: Buffed slightly. BTW, this stacks with everything. * Navigation Map: This mission reward was supposed to grant a buff on the Open Sea but did nothing. Now it works with currents to increase your speed. * Smooth Planked Hull: Such outfitting is now available for colossal ships. * Studding Sails, Exceptional: There were two different items with this same name. Now one is called Superior and the other Exceptional. * Tangle of Ratlines: Required you be level 50 to use it but was rewared at level 20. Now you only have to be level 20 to use it. * Loot-only outfitting is no longer displayed in Help. Ship Combat / Skills: * NPCs no longer count against the limit of 6 on a side in ad hoc battles. * Reinforements now spawn close to groupmate's initial spawn locations instead of in the middle of the enemy spawns. We hope. * There's a greater chance per player in a group that NPCs killed by the group will drop additional loot. This is additive. Current tuning is such that, with 3 people in a group, there is an 80% chance that a second loot roll will be made when an NPC is sunk. If there are 4 people in the group, there is a 100% chance that a second loot roll will be made and a 20% chance that a third loot roll will be made. * There are no longer any invalid ships. Pirates are no longer flagged for PvP when they sail a captured ship that is career-restricted. * Respecs are now available in shops again. They are also available for commendations other than the lowest level of commendation. * Changed "Increase Crew" to "Recover Crew" in tooltips for skills such as Rally the Crew, To the Last Man, Fighting Spirit, and Surprise Below Decks. * Unstick: Corrected the tooltip. It doesn't teleport you to the entry of the encounter - it only moves you a few feet. The goal is to help you get unstuck if you've beached your ship. * When entering a ship duel, players were sometimes facing the wrong way. Fixed. Cutthroat * Career Base: Added 5% turn rate * Death's Embrace: Fixed a bug that caused the self effect to disappear if you changed targets. * Hit and Run: Range 400 -> 450 * Plague Ship: Clarified the description in the tooltip as the duration shown is the longest duration, which is the "immunity" period. This applies to every crew damage skill and every stun skill. * Run Them Down: Fixed a bug that caused the self effect to disappear if you changed targets. Buccaneer * Bosun's Starter: Now requires 80% or less sails to use. * Command Line: The self buff portion of these now stack, so you can use all commands at once if desired. * Dark as Night: Fixed a bug that reduced the amount of stealth this provides. Battle Speed 5% -> 9%. * Master of Pursuit: Added +4 accuracy. Fixed the skill description to be correct. * Sweep the Decks: No longer has a range requirement. * Weapons Handling: 5% reload/damage -> 6% reload/damage Privateer * Claim Prize: Now always provides a freetrader commendation and has a 50% chance to provide a navy commendation. * Death's Embrace: Fixed a bug that caused the self effect to disappear if you changed targets. Navy * Emergency Repairs: Now works if your ship has taken any armor OR sail damage. * Escort: No longer provides a self buff. * Last Resort Speed: This was supposde to provide a 90 second speed boost and a 130 second attack block. The attack block was getting applied for 90 seconds. Fixed. Freetrader * Career Base: Added 6% reload rate * Determination: Fixed a bug that caused the self effect to disappear if you changed to any target outside the range requirement. * Expert Mercenary: Reset 20min -> 10min * Expert Gunner: Reset 20min -> 10min * Hold Together: Now works if your ship has taken armor or sail damage. Also, this no longer requires a repair bundle. * Provision Allies: Clarified the description in the tooltip. It doesn't increase your crew, but it recovers lost crew. * Ranging Shot: Had no reset timer, but was supposed to have a 3 minute timer. Fixed. * Rescue Me: Now requires 80% or less sails to use. * Sailhandling Drills: Added 4% battle speed Swashbuckling: * Changed the way drawing weapons work to make it look less glitchy when you are out of combat. * Improved animation blending in general - all combats should look better now. * Active Block tooltip now states that it costs 10 Initiative to use. * Active Dodge and Active Parry tooltips now correctly display duration. * Reckless Swings line of skills now clearly state that they require the target be an enemy. * Added a 6-second cooldown to the Revive and Resuscitate skills. * Shin Kick has a new icon. * Slice now requires a target. * Vicious Foot Slash: Corrected offense bonus shown in tooltip. Missions: * Some players didn't realize that flirting had such long-term consequences and wanted to change the choice they'd made. We now have a mission, available from an NPC named Dr. Love, that lets you do that. * There were several instances where NPCs either didn't have the ! over their heads until you talked to them or, once you talked to them, it would disappear even though you needed to talk to them again. This happened most often in what we call "endless quests" - places where you have a bit of an ongoing conversation with an NPC or multiple NPCs in a room in order to advance a mission. The ! should show up correctly in all cases now. If you find any where it doesn't, please let us know. * If you talked to an NPC and left the interact window open while you fought, you might not be able to complete the mission. Fixed. * Fixed a problem that was causing some missions to spawn the wrong ships. * Enemy and ally escorts will now be more proactive about attacking in pretty much all missions. * Some swashbuckling missions wouldn't let you use Smelling Salts when you should have been able to. Fixed those. For those that don't let you use Smelling Salts by design, text has been added to make this clear so you're not surprised by the limitation. * Tweaked some Swashbuckling standard encounters to be less overwhelming to players so the missions that use this will be more reasonable for player level. * The following missions have been flagged as group missions: A Cunning Plan, Balancing the Books, Clean Sweep, Commendable Action, Gold Strike, The Gunpowder Plot, Irish Eyes are Smiling, False Choice, No Excuses No Exceptions, The Nutty Navigator, Opposition Research, Place Your Bets, and Submit or Die. You can still solo these if you like but they're very difficult to do alone. If you had accepted these missions but hadn't completed them, they've been removed from your mission list and you'll need to re-take them in order to complete them. * When looking for missions to flag as group missions, ConCo discovered one standard encounter used for missions like Ransom where 4 flagships were being spawned, making the missions very difficult. To make them more reasonable, the spawns have been reduced in level (they should come out as lower-level ships than the mission level), and only 3 flagships will spawn. * It was possible for groupmates to rejoin failed mission encounters. Now, when a mission is failed, after 2 minutes, players receive an effect that prevents receiving XP and loot while in that mission. * Reputation Missions: You were able to take certain Become Trusted missions when you were already trusted by the faction. And you wouldn't get certain Become Esteemed missions until you were already esteemed. Fixed that. * Tutorial: Tab is supposed to cycle you through enemies from the nearest to the furtherest and back again. It wasn't always working to cycle back again. Fixed that. * We did a polish pass on starter missions. As a result, we added missions pointing you to your career mentor to expedite finding A Man of Wealth and Taste and we removed the "Welcome to Town" mission chain. * Slightly increased the XP possible to acquire doing starter missions. * The Economy: Building the Warehouse: Not building the warehouse would put this mission into a wonky state. Fixed that. * The Economy: Delivering the Logs: Explained how to drag/drop items to move to/from inventory. * A Man of Wealth and Taste: NPCs couldn't surrender. Now they can. * Meat Me Halfway: The skybox was broken. Should look better now. * Unruly Patrons: The ally NPCs were no help at all. They're better now. * Red Tide: It was possible to skip the bit about escorting the captains to the pilot boat. Fixed that. Also, if you let one enemy escape, you couldn't progress in the mission. Fixed that too. * Miscommunication (and missions like it): The rival would sometimes veer off from port for no visible reason. Fixed that. * Portobello Missions: These were available to players of all nations but that made no sense. Now they're available to Spanish players only. * Damaged Goods: Now offers a reward for completion. * Captured Crew: Now offers a reward for completion. * Pressing Need: You can no longer talk to the target NPC after the fight starts. That was causing some problems. Fixed several other issues with this mission as well. These changes may cause Pressing Need and A Pressing Engagement to fall off your mission list if you have accepted them but not completed them. If so, simply reaccept them from the NPC. * The Strange Case: Speaking to the enemy captain resulted in code instead of text. Fixed that. * Deals within Wheels: After meeting with Maxwell Fosbrooke, you were sent to the wrong location. Fixed that. * Shark-Infested Waters (and missions like it): Made the crates easier to click on. * (18) Always Keep an Eye Out: After completing this mission, Alphonse Mercado should have been missing an eye but wasn't. Fixed that. * Bad Neighbors: The friendly NPC was an unresponsive British Townsfolk, instead of Milla Gordet. Fixed. * Run Out the Guns!: You were sent to the wrong NPC to turn this in. Fixed. * Book Return: If you died, you had to wait for the 5-minute timer in order to leave. Fixed that. * Scholarly Pursuit: You were encouraged to exit the mission before you completed it. (The Exit Encounter button would start flashing even though you needed to speak to Jonas.) And, when you returned, you were told to speak to Jonas in the wrong location. Fixed that. * Family Matters: The wrong NPC was in the mission and you were told to kill the wrong guy. Fixed that. * Outfox the Henhouse: Allied ships should now appear Dutch. If you had this mission but hadn't completed it, it will be removed from your mission list. Simply accept it again to complete it. * Tale of the Lost: You're now flying your own flag as you should be. * Gesture of Peace: Corrected text for French and Spanish characters. * Beyond the Sea: If you cancelled this mission and retook it, you wouldn't be able to complete it. Fixed that. * Flash of the Blade: Added missing text. * Wayward Officer: Your allies were useless. Fixed that. * By Popular Demand: Fixed some issues that could make this difficult to complete. * Patrolling Cayenne: It wasn't possible to turn in this mission on completion. Fixed. * Under Scrutiny: There was an extraneous icon on the map for no reason and players naturally found it confusing. Removed it. * Island of the Monkeys: Clicking on the equipment didn't complete the encounter objective. Now it does. * Proud Mary: It was possible to injure Mary, preventing mission completion. Fixed. * Caring for our Own: The conversation with the smuggler was code instead of text. Fixed that. * A Fort Too Far (and missions that use the same encounter): The longboat you click on to leave wasn't showing up on the radar/local map. Fixed that. * Seventeen Bones: Fixed the broken skybox. * Spiritual Currency: Clarified the encounter objective: You use the rum to burn the tobacco. * Sinking the 'Swallow': British ships were a weird color. Fixed. * An Ill Wind...: Added a mouseover highlight to the paper you need to interact with to make it easier to discover. * An Ill Wind... / Strange Visitors: It's now clearer when you accept these missions that doing so will prevent you from taking the other chain. * The Dealmaker: When you accept, you now see text instead of code. * Et Fili, Et Spiritus Sancti: You had to press X to get the chart fragment. You should be able to click on it now. * Jurisdiction Clause: Fixed an encounter objective that sometimes showed up multiple times. * Mousquetaires Noirs: There were a number of problems with the Musketeer Pistol, including difficulties using it during Boarding Combat. Fixed. * Musketeers Sans Muskets: If you failed the mission, you couldn't exit until the In Combat timer cooled down. Fixed that. * Pardon Me!: NPCs in the final Buccaneer career mission should no longer get lost. * Total Coverage: Fixed the encounter objective. It used to say you needed to board two ships when one will do. * You Are What You Eat: It was possible to get stuck in this mission. Fixed that. * Suzette's Dissertation now has a 12 second 40% swashbuckling DR buff. And tells you that. * NPCs in epic missions were dropping 3x as much loot as they should. Fixed that. (Affects Bey's Retreat as well as Fortaleza de Luz.) Economy: * You can now drag and drop an item from your inventory to another player to initiate a trade with them. * When trading with another player, if you had a partial stack already of an item you were receiving, the trade would happen correctly but reporting (chat, for example) might be inaccurate. Fixed that. * Trade UI: Pressing Esc used to just hide the trade window. Now it actually cancels the trade. * Warehouses now have a stack cap of 250, instead of 100. * The Junk Merchant was paying more for Rough items than for Inferior items, which made no sense. He's sobered up now. * There only exist oak Barrels so having oak in the name was redundant. Removed it. * Advanced Huge Hull Construction: Used to cost more than the standard, even though for all other such advanced things, the only difference in cost was labor. Brought it into line with the rest - costs the same but more labor required. * St. Anne Schooner recipe no longer requires ship provisioning items. * You now receive an insurance payment to recoup part of your losses if you sink. A portion of the cost of your ship and permanent outfitting is paid to you. * It wasn't possible to learn the recipe for Fine-Grained Gunpowder, Exceptional. Now it is. * Master Shipyard (Large): Clarified the description of the structure recipe labor multiplier because we keep getting questions about what it is supposed to do. Open Sea: * Ad Hoc Invisibility: 90 seconds -> 65 seconds * Preparing Ship: 100 seconds -> 75 seconds. * If you happened to sail over an NPC spawn point just as they spawned, you'd immediately get drawn into battle with no warning whatsoever. Now NPCs spawn with the "Preparing Ship" effect so that they can't attack immediately and you can see them before they can do anything to you. * The Lyon Hoy now regularly spawns in level-appropriate Freetrader groups. * The El Dragon now regularly spawns in level-appropriate Pirate and Privateer groups. * Some Smuggler's Union ships would appear to be one thing on the Open Sea but turn out to be something else in battle. Fixed that. * You should now get a HUD and hear a sound when sailing on the Open Sea and crossing the border into a Pirate PvP zone. PvP / Port Contention: * The rule is supposed to be "If you enter the open sea and you're invisible, then you cannot join a PvP battle or attack another player. Invisibility prevents all PvP interaction." There were a few instances where groupmates weren't following that rule. Fixed that. * You get 100% loot for boarding and 80% for sinking. However, sinking a level 50 ship should have resulted in 5 MOV. Now it does and boarding results in 6 MOV. * Changed the points at which unrest changes port state. The new levels are: 3000 = Pirate PvP, 6000 = Open PvP. Port flipped is still 10,000. We're doing this to make it easier for players to push ports to the point of interesting PvP happening at them. We chose 3000 because that is slightly more unrest than is gained by one complete economy unrest pick-up. So you can't push a port into PvP with a single unrest pick-up. * It wasn't possible to generate personal contention points after a port hit 10,000 unrest. Now it is. * Added Marks of War and set them up as part of the economic unrest turn in. * Tuned Economic unrest turn ins so that about 4-5 times as much unrest is generated per item. You can now generate about 2800 unrest per 6 hours with economic turn ins. * Based on player feedback, we've decided that defenders should be able to execute economic unrest turn-ins in the Normal landmark state. This means that Offensive and Defensive players should be able to turn in economic unrest goods during the same states. * The unrest bundle items now have distinguishable icons. * There were still some occasions when someone sunk while in boarding combat would break a Port Battle. Fixed. * When Pirates conquer a port, they now get 4 victory points instead of 3. * We now explain where to turn in your Citations of Conquest. Art / Sound: Avatars: * Added some additional heads to choose from. * Changed the way you idle. Should look less goofy now. * Freetrader Recipe Trainer: Added a floaty over his head to make him more noticable. * Fixed several NPCs that were above or in the ground. They're now on the ground as they should be. Towns * Cabo Raphael: The Fence was writing on a non-existent desk. Now he stands up as is fitting his station. * Charlesfort(and towns that look like it): Completely overhauled the town art. * Caracas: Added a sign to the door of the Admiralty Office. * Cartagena: The sounds emanating from musical NPCs now match their instruments. * Golden Lake (and towns that look like it): Some porches were inaccessible. Fixed that. * Pointe-a-Pitre: Fixed an issue where the camera could clip through a wall. * Port Royal: It was possible to stand near the sea and not hear the surf. Fixed that. * Puerta de Plata: Moved the Florentine and Dirty Fighting masters so they're no longer facing rocks and trees. * Rosignol (and towns that look like it): Completely overhauled the town art. * Ruddy Cove (and towns that look like it): Completely overhauled the town art. * Tortuga: Almost none of the smuggler's tunnels went where they said they did. Now they do. Also, fixed several chambering issues (places where you'd be walking along and suddenly there's emptiness for a bit before the next part of the town loaded). Ships * Curieuse Snow: Decreased the resources used by the low LOD version. This should improve performance where there are a lot of them about. * Corsair Xebec: Sails did not behave correctly. Fixed that. Sound: * Fixed some combat log spam due to sound problems during swashbuckling. UI: * Server Selection UI: Added new artwork. * Chat UI: Chat windows can now be shrunk to two lines of chat. * Toolbars: It's now possible to lock them in place via a preferences setting even when you have the rest of the UI set to be movable. Also, now when you drop something on the toolbar, if there is something in that slot, the old thing gets stuck to your cursor. Makes it easy to swap and arrange stuff in your toolbar. * Toolbars / Inventory UI: You now need to drag a toolbar item or cargo item much farther before it is recognized as a drag operation. This makes it harder to whip a toolbar item off your toolbar by mistake. Also, now when you drag an item (skill, cargo, etc), you can let up the mouse and, if there is no valid drop target under the mouse, the item sticks to the cursor. You can then click on a valid drop target for the item, and it will drop the item there. You can clear the item stuck to your cursor by right-clicking or dropping the item in the world. Dragging something out of the toolbar empties the toolbar button -- cancelling the drag later will not bring that item back into the toolbar slot. Dragging cargo, however, does not remove the cargo unless you successfully drop it somewhere else. So cancelling a cargo drag has no effect. * Radar/Compass: There's now a Preference that lets you lock this to always point North. There was an old Preference called "Rotate minimap with camera." That has been deleted, and if anybody had that set, it has now been reset. That setting is merged into the new dropdown. Also, shrunk the size of the icon for Active Missions so they're less likely to overlap each other. It's still possible, if you scroll the map all the way, to get them to overlap in some cases, but that's extreme. * Mission UI: Improved the art for some of the icons. * World Map: Currents are now shown. Also, if you had the World Map open while changing screen resolution, some port markers wouldn't move. Fixed that. * Harbor Master UI: You can now double-click to move to another ship. * Swashbuckling Trainer UI scroll bar sweet spots were offset, making it difficult and confusing to scroll those windows. Fixed that. * New Port Status UI * In-world Firing Arcs and Wind Indicator are now turned on by default. We used to leave them turned off but turned them on during the tutorial but this caused a variety of problems. Now they're on by default. If you'd like to turn them off, change the setting in the Interface section of Preferences. * Improved the look of the variety of message boxes in the game. * Society MOTD: If someone was trying to update this when a member zoned or the page updated in some other way, work would be lost. Fixed that. Stability / Performance: * Made a change that should prevent character rollbacks. Let us know ASAP if this happens to you!!! * A player reported that they teleported and lost their ship. This is slightly different from the other rollback bug some players have experienced. We figured out what happened to him and fixed it. * Made some changes to help prevent the mission rollback bug. Let us know ASAP if this happens to you!!! * Added some logging to help us track down the mission rollback bug if it turns out that we haven't completely fixed it. * While digging into the mission rollback bug, we found a place we were sending unnecessary network traffic and keeping extraneous info in memory when we didn't need to. Fixed that. * While testing, some of our QA staffers crashed the game. We have no record of players hitting this crash but crashes are bad so we fixed it. * Fixed a rare zone server crash cleaning up auction info on shut-down. We don't think data was lost in this crash but crashes are bad so... fixed. * A GM was monkeying around one day and figured out a way to reliably crash the zone server he was in (which happened to be a popular town). Fixed the crash. * Removed a Society warning that was harmless. No need to spam your logs like that. Misc: * Several keys (Page Up, Page Down, Insert, Delete, Home, End, Pause, and others) could be mapped to hotkeys but have no effect. Fixed. * BSharp tweaked the rate that a camera snaps to your target. See what you think. * Fixed a bug in Societies where, if a character was renamed, the Society remembered the old name. * When the last player is removed from a Society, the society name is freed. That wasn't true before. * Cleaned up some WARNING spam in your game logs. There were times when certain warnings would fire that really weren't a problem so they didn't need to be logged. * Removed descriptions for some obsolete deeds from Help. * Added more localized text and fixes to some localized text from SOE. Category:Patch Notes